[pianotech] Pianos from the past

[Chuck Behm]

          My dad died of Alzheimer’s at the age of 95. The last several
years of his life were spent in a nursing home in Mason City, Iowa. He spent
most of his time in a silent world of contemplative reverie. Few things
could penetrate the fog that enveloped him.

            I found two things that worked. One was to start reading from
the Journal aloud to him. He had 20 years worth in binders on his shelves. I
would pick an issue at random, open it up and begin reading.

            Slowly, dad’s eyes would seem to focus a bit. He would begin to
nod slowly, as if to himself. I would finish  the article and wait.
“Krefting,” he would say softly. “Jack Krefting.”

            I would flip to another issue and read something else. “Susan
Graham,” he would say, smiling slightly.

            Another article. “Lyon’s Roar,” he would say.

            He was right more often than not. For some reason, these
articles were there in his mind where he could grasp them. It was as if for
the moment the fog would lift a bit, and for a short time he was on a firmer
ground.

The other trick concerned pianos from his past. Dad was born in ’06, and
when he graduated high school went to Chicago to live for several years.
There he worked in a paint store matching paint samples by day, and played
piano in various dance halls at night. He remembered, to his dying day, a
number of the pianos that he played on.

After warming up with the Journal, I would stop and ask him, “Remember that
Haddorff, dad?

He would be silent for a moment, and then would smile. “Yeah, yeah. At the
Paradise. Big sound!” he would say.  “Filled the hall. Great piano!”

Again a long lapse of silence as he thought back. “How about that J. Bauer,
dad, do you remember that one?”

“Sure,” he’d say, without hesitation. “Don’t remember the place that was at.
Built right in Chicago, though. Had a sostenuto pedal. Great instrument.
Wish I had that piano here now.”

So did I. The home had a Wurlitzer console in the activity room. Dad never
played it.

That was usually as far as I could take dad towards a lucid conversation.
When I would try to steer things in any other direction he would again
become quiet, lost in a place that was beyond finding.

Perhaps this explains somewhat my prejudice towards pianos from that bygone
era. I realize that many of them have problems that sometimes are beyond
fixing. They’ve weathered many decades of wear and tear, and have not gone
unscathed. But I have a deep appreciation for the integrity of their
construction.

Pianos built during my youth (born in 1950) somehow just aren’t the same.
Imagine in a few short years, when I’m sitting in a nursing home, one of my
grown children saying to me something like, “Remember that Story and Clark,
dad?”

My eyes would clear for a moment, and I would say, “Yeah, yeah. The one with
the fable Storytone soundboard! That was a piano!”

Or, more likely perhaps, “That was a piano?”
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